Selenium keyboard action that will enable working and testing

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I am working with Selenium and ChromeDriver using Java.

I noticed that I can perform mouse actions like click or double-click and yet continue working on my tasks as the test run in the background.

Is there a way to do so with Selenium keyboard?

Notice that I wish to click text on prompt windows (like file selecting prompt) and not on the browser itself, while keep using my own keyboard.

My code:

robot = new Robot();
        for (char c : textToType.toCharArray()) {
            int keyCode = KeyEvent.getExtendedKeyCodeForChar(c);
            if (KeyEvent.CHAR_UNDEFINED == keyCode) {
                logger.error("Key code not found for character '" + c + "'");
            } else {
                try {
                    robot.keyPress(keyCode);
                    robot.delay(10);
                    robot.keyRelease(keyCode);
                    robot.delay(10);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    if (c == '_') {
                        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
                        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_MINUS);
                        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_MINUS);
                        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
                    }
                    if (c == ':') {
                        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
                        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_SEMICOLON);
                        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_SEMICOLON);
                        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        logger.error(ex.getMessage());
    }
selenium-webdriver selenium java
1 Answers

Selenium is a free (open source) automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. But it does not have the ability to handle all keyboard and mouse events such as right-click, drag and drop, clickAndHold etc.

Handling Keyboard Keys/Events

Keyboard Keys/Events can be handled in conjunction with WebDriver through the following ways:

  • Handle Keyboard Keys/Events using Action class.
  • Handle Keyboard Keys/Events using sendkeys chord.
  • Handle Keyboard Keys/Events using Robot class.

You can find a detailed relevant discussion in Why do we need Robot class when we have Actions class in selenium

Your usecase

However, performing mouse actions like click or double-click and continue working on your tasks as the test run in the background will be against all the best practices, as:

  • Test Execution must be performed in a controlled environment to garner optimized performance.
  • While your @Tests are executing, it should be free from Manual Intervention.

  • Particularly when your @Tests are Selenium based, while test execution is In Progress the Test Environment shouldn't be intervened because:

    • At the lowest level, the behavior of actions class is intended to mimic the remote end's behavior with an actual input device as closely as possible, and the implementation strategy may involve e.g. injecting synthesized events into a browser event loop. Therefore the steps to dispatch an action will inevitably end up in implementation-specific territory. However there are certain content observable effects that must be consistent across implementations. To accommodate this, the specification requires that remote ends perform implementation-specific action dispatch steps, along with a list of events and their properties. This list is not comprehensive; in particular the default action of the input source may cause additional events to be generated depending on the implementation and the state of the browser (e.g. input events relating to key actions when the focus is on an editable element, scroll events, etc.).

  • Additionally,

    • An activation trigger generated by the WebDriver API user needs to be indistinguishable from those generated by a real user interacting with the browser. In particular, the dispatched events will have the isTrusted attribute set to true. The most robust way to dispatch these events is by creating them in the browser implementation itself. Sending OS-specific input messages to the browser's window has the disadvantage that the browser being automated may not be properly isolated from a user accidentally modifying input source state. Use of an OS-level accessibility API has the disadvantage that the browser's window must be focused, and as a result, multiple WebDriver instances cannot run in parallel.

    • An advantage of an OS-level accessibility API is that it guarantees that inputs correctly mirror user input, and allows interaction with the host OS if necessary. This might, however, have performance penalties from a machine utilisation perspective.

  • Additionally,

    • Robot Class is used to generate native system input events for the purposes of test automation, self-running demos, and other applications where control of the mouse and keyboard is needed. The primary purpose of Robot is to facilitate automated testing of Java platform implementations. Using the class to generate input events differs from posting events to the AWT event queue or AWT components in that the events are generated in the platform's native input queue. For example, Robot.mouseMove will actually move the mouse cursor instead of just generating mouse move events.

  • Finally, as per Internet Explorer and Native Events:

    • As the InternetExplorerDriver is Windows-only, it attempts to use so-called "native", or OS-level events to perform mouse and keyboard operations in the browser. This is in contrast to using simulated JavaScript events for the same operations. The advantage of using native events is that it does not rely on the JavaScript sandbox, and it ensures proper JavaScript event propagation within the browser. However, there are currently some issues with mouse events when the IE browser window does not have focus, and when attempting to hover over elements.

  • Browser Focus:

    • The challenge is that IE itself appears to not fully respect the Windows messages we send the IE browser window (WM_MOUSEDOWN and WM_MOUSEUP) if the window doesn't have the focus. Specifically, the element being clicked on will receive a focus window around it, but the click will not be processed by the element. Arguably, we shouldn't be sending messages at all; rather, we should be using the SendInput() API, but that API explicitly requires the window to have the focus. We have two conflicting goals with the WebDriver project.

    • First, we strive to emulate the user as closely as possible. This means using native events rather than simulating the events using JavaScript.

    • Second, we want to not require focus of the browser window being automated. This means that just forcing the browser window to the foreground is sub-optimal.

You can find a detailed discussion in Way to open Selenium browser not overlapping my current browser

  • Moreover, you need to keep your browser maximized as minimized browser will give element not found error.

You can find a detailed discussion in How to execute tests with selenium webdriver while browser is minimized

Reference

You can find a relevant detailed discussion in:

user_74294470
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